What They Never Told Her
by DarkHairedVeela
Summary: "Ever wonder how Combustion Man got his third eye?" At that moment, all Toph wondered was how her father could possibly know Combustion Man. She sunk to the ground with her friends, her eyebrows scrunched waiting to hear the story. Rated T just in case.


What They Never Told Her

Summary: "Ever wonder how Combustion Man got his third eye?" At that moment, all Toph wondered was how her father could possibly know Combustion Man.

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It was that time of the year again. Toph sighed resignedly as the airship glided along the airways towards her childhood home. It would be her seventeenth birthday tomorrow which meant tea with the 'rents. After Zuko had taken position as Fire Lord and the King of Losers was thrown into a cell Toph set out alone to travel the world.

She kind of disappeared without a trace but she was glad no one tried to contact her for that first year. Everyone was worried about her, she knew but it was something she had to do. Toph had grown a lot from the stubborn little girl the Avatar decided to take around the world, and she needed to get to know the person she had become. She met a few people on her travels—sandbenders, a Rough Rhino member, and some traveling hippies. Somewhere along the line she acquired a giant eel-hound. It definitely wasn't a badger-mole but it was a lot better than walking day after day.

She named her new companion Idanu when he proved himself to have even better senses than her own against a band of rebels out for the death of anyone involved with the Pheonix King's imprisonment.

It was a few weeks before her fourteenth birthday that she decided to return home. It wasn't as bad as she had originally thought. Maybe it was seeing their daughter atop a creature that was as tall as the large walls surrounding their home. Maybe it was the bits and scraps of news they got about their powerful earthbending daughter. Or maybe she looked older to them. Either way the smothering parents she once knew were replaced by a couple much more bearable.

They had tea on her fourteenth birthday. And when she left on Idanu, they didn't send anyone after her.

They had tea on her fifteenth birthday, and again on her sixteenth.

But it was going to be different this time.

Zuko walked up to his friend, placing a hand on her shoulder. Toph tilted her head in greeting a small smile gracing her lips. "Do you think the Avatar is there already?"

"Probably. I have a feeling he's been there for at least a day now," she gave a nervous laugh. "I think he's trying to apologize for "kid-napping" me."

Mai snorted. She who been standing next to Toph the entire time, staring out the airship window while her friend could not. "I didn't know Aang kidnapped you."

"I didn't know you could laugh, Sunshine," Toph retorted over-sweetly. The girls smiled at each other. "When I left my parents to teach Aang my parents weren't very pleased," she said with a shrug. "But the way I see it, it's water under the bridge and Twinkle Toes should just stop being a stick in the mud."

Toph ran her hand over her head. Mai had spent over an hour braiding half of it up into a maze of loops and bends that seemed to have no end. Toph worried how long it would take for her undo them before she went to bed that night. Her hand traveled down to the hair that Mai had left to hang like willow branches down her back.

Suddenly, Toph gasped, she reached out to cling to Zuko's arm. "Earth Rumble 12! The Blind Bandit is back!"she shouted, her feet skittering across the floor in a little jig. Immediately, she shot away from the window and into the metal clad halls that would lead her to Idanu. He needed to hear the good news.

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A/N: At first this was going to be just a one shot, but then I decided I wanted to try this out as a full blown story. Combustion Man is still alive in this story (if he ever died, I can't remember if that was confirmed). This is also a love story between Combustion Man and Toph. I think it's going to be kind of sweet so despite the potential creepy please stick around :) thank you.

Please review! I may set Combustion Man on you . . . or not . . .


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